


Coffin of Glass

by tselina



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Child clone, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hope in Tragedy, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Kid Fic, Medical Experimentation, Mission Fic, Relatively Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:29:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6840817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tselina/pseuds/tselina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soldier is sent to retrieve a package.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffin of Glass

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in vague terms so that it could be compliant with comics canon & movie canon (though with a distinct leaning towards movie canon). It is sad, but with a hopeful twist at the end. Pre-Serum & Post-Serum Steve tidbits abound. If you'd like more Captain America, check out [Salva Nos, Stella Maris](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6684226/chapters/15286645).

The package is a child.

A boy, perhaps no older than ten, pale and blond. He rolls over in his plain metal bed when the Soldier appears, and regards him with a sour look.  
  
"It's five in the morning," the package says.  
  
"Yes, it is," the Soldier replies.  
  
"You're not supposed to wake me up until seven on weekdays."  
  
"Immediate extraction is dictated within my mission parameters."  
  
The package sits up slowly, carefully. His shoulders are rigid with alarm.  
  
"You're not a scientist," he says.  
  
"No," the Soldier replies. "I am here to retrieve you."  
  
The package squints. He fumbles for his glasses from the side table, then gets out of bed. He is slightly bow-legged, noticeable even in his baggy blue-stripe pyjamas.  
  
"'Retrieve', huh," the package says. "That's a fancy word for 'steal'."  
  
The Soldier shrugs his metal arm in response. This isn't answer enough for the package, but he sighs with a kind of exasperated defeat, putting his slippers on.  
  
"Well, come on," he says, motioning for the Soldier to come closer. "I have to take my medication."  
  
The hallways are empty. The package either does not notice, or does not want to know. There is a reason, of course: the Soldier has killed the staff as they slept. It was a neat job, considering. He has not bothered to dispose of the bodies, for when the Soldier leaves with the package, he will burn the place to the ground as he was told.  
  
The package leads the Soldier to a small dining room. It has a small varnished bar-top for food preparation, a sink, a refrigerator and an electric water kettle. There is a low shelf with an array of pill bottles and nasal sprays arranged prettily on silver trays. There's a table with two chairs. Everything is without decoration, plain and purely for function.  
  
"Sit down," the package says, and the Soldier has not been explicitly forbidden to oblige the package's instructions, so he sits. He watches the package go through one tray with efficient, fluid motions.  
  
"I need your help," the package says as he turns around. "You need to make me my oatmeal."  
  
"I do?"  
  
"Yeah. I can't take my next set of medicines on an empty stomach." The package looks at his slippers. "I'm not allowed to use the kettle by myself any longer."  
  
The Soldier has a routine for food preparation, somewhere; his mind filters through a various array of commands until it finds the right one. He stands, and the package watches the Soldier as he goes to work in the half-kitchen. There is a basket of small, air-tight envelopes. They simply bear the word OATMEAL, and nothing else.  
  
The Soldier decides to bring the package a glass of water while the kettle boils. The package eyes it warily, but takes it with his thin-boned hands. An ugly, badly healed burn on the package's wrist is visible for a brief moment, then disappears under his sleeve again.  
  
"Thanks," he murmurs. The packages waits for the oatmeal to cool before he eats it, but then he bolts it down quickly, as if he is trying his best not to taste it. When he is done, he makes a face, and finishes his glass of water just as fast.  
  
"My food is like that," the Solider says, "I do not like its taste, but I have to eat."  
  
The package gets up to put his dishes in the sink. "Sounds bad. You're sort of an experiment too, aren't you?"  
  
"I suppose," says the Soldier, but he is suddenly a little unnerved. He is not in a situation where he is required to partake in small talk, and yet he has offered information without prompting.  
  
"Are you a robot?" The package raises his hand to touch the red star on the Soldier's shoulder. His fingertips hover above it briefly, and the arm's sensors pick up the barest hint of heat.  
  
"No," the Soldier says. "I am human. This is merely a replacement for a severed limb."  
  
The package's fingers curl back into his palm. "Okay," he says. He sounds a little disappointed. "So, when are we going?"  
  
"Soon," says the Soldier. "Don't you have more medicine to take?"  
  
"Oh," the package says. "You're right."  
  
He does as the Soldier says, the bottles and sprays clinking as the package goes through his regimen. There are a great many doses to be seen to. The package misfires the final throat spray, and he coughs, a bone-rattling, full-bodied thing that sets the Soldier on edge.  
  
Before the mission, the Soldier was subjected to a number of hygienic measures that had, at the time, seemed unnecessary. An hours long sauna to rid him of the film of mucus that remained from a month in cryo. Daily injections of vaccines and vitamins. Two new uniforms: one to wear while he cleaned the compound of security and staff, the other to be worn only after the Soldier had sanitized his skin and hair with a strong-smelling spray.  
  
The Soldier sees now how fragile the package is and knows none of the precautions in place were excessive. He wonders now if they were thorough enough.  
  
"Ugh," the package says, holding his chest. His voice is weak and scratchy, now, and there are tears of effort in his eyes. He pushes his glasses up his nose, sweeps his trembling hand through his short-cropped hair.  
  
"Well, I guess I need to pack, if I'm leaving," he says. "I don't have much. But we'll have to get my afternoon and evening medications from lock-up."  
  
The Soldier stands. "Understood," he says. "I have an array of key cards we can use for authorization."  
  
The package smiles wanly and does not ask the Soldier where he'd retrieved them.  
  
"I don't need those," he says, and walks up to the Soldier. "Come on. What do I call you?"  
  
"I--" The Soldier pauses. He has not been told to refrain from revealing himself, but it seems unwise to tell the package too much. His handlers have no real name for him, and never have. But the package requires some form of address, and so the Soldier will supply. "I am Winter."  
  
"All right, Winter," the package says, holding out his hand. "I'm Grant."  
  
"Grant," Winter says. He shakes the hand offered, with a light touch, and he feels how easily it would be to crush the boy's fingers with careless handling. He pulls away abruptly.  
  
The halls hum with electricity, scented with artificial pine and lemon. Grant takes Winter on a convoluted route to the compound's cold storage, and for a moment Winter considers the possibility that the package is attempting to confuse him, so he can escape. Mentally, he compares their journey to the blueprints he's memorized, and realizes it is the way to bypass any high-level clearance checkpoints.  
  
"This is certainly a major security flaw," Winter says. They rest near a set of glass doors with a bench as Grant catches his breath.  
  
"You're telling me," the package says. He wipes a sheen of sweat from his brow. "Could you pass me my pack?"  
  
They have walked less than two miles by the Soldier's count at a relatively slow pace, and yet the boy seems close to collapse. The backpack the Soldier has been carrying for him seems too heavy to burden him with.  
  
"What do you want from it?" Winter asks.  
  
"Just give it to me," the package says, holding out a shaking hand.  
  
"I will not," the Soldier says. "Your condition is poor. It would be ill advised for you to take it. What do you want from it?"  
  
"Give it to me, damn it!" Grant shouts, standing up to stand his ground. He does not get far; he's moved too quickly for his body to catch up, and the package pitches forward in a faint.  
  
The Soldier catches him easily with his right arm. The package is as light as a fledgling, but far more breakable. It is easy for Winter to move him to the ground, to prop his head up on the pack he'd demanded. After checking Grant's vital signs -- perpetually faint, but within tolerable ranges -- Winter adjusts himself on the bench once more. He attunes himself to the sound of the package's breathing, his heartbeat, to detect fluctuations as they arise.  
  
He waits.

**  
  
"-- oh, jeez, pal, I've pushed you too far this time, had'n I?"  
  
"No, it's all right, Bu --, I'm just glad we were in the back..."  
  
"Yeah, small miracles -- hey, just take my jacket. Let's find a place to get you changed. Your shirt's a mess, it needs cleanin' real bad."  
  
"Yeah.. okay."  
  
"-- ve? What's wrong? Why the long face? Ain't no one saw you properly, y'know..."  
  
"It's 'cause I can't even have fun without failin', somehow."  
  
"That's not true."  
  
"How's it not true, --ky? Look at me! We've only been here half a day and now we have to go home 'cause I got sick."  
  
"The Cy--on- makes lots of people sick, St--!"  
  
"But they recover quick! I'm washed up already 'cause of it, --ck!"  
  
"Ah, damn it, --te--, you ain't washed up unless you say you're washed up -- hey, come back here, St-- !"  
  
"I don't get you, B--k! First you're hennin' over me, second you're giving me a god-damn speech about mind over matter. Make up your mind! Are you my mom, or are you my friend?"  
  
_I'm not. I'm something else to you. Aren't I?_  
  
**  
  
The Soldier wakes from unexpected sleep. It is something he does rarely, and only when his defenses are down. His defenses are never down.  
  
The package -- the boy -- drowses at Winter's feet, tucked up against the cool leather of his boots. He seems to have gotten what he wanted from the pack: two plastic applesauce packages litter the ground near his tucked arms.  
  
He turns around, his eyes not quite fixing on the Soldier. They are a milky blue. The Soldier realizes the package must be mostly blind, even with his glasses.  
  
"Are they happy with you?" he asks.  
  
The question does not quite parse with Winter, and not because he is still off-balance from unexpected dreams. "Explain," he says.  
  
The boy struggles to sit properly, delicately picking up his trash and putting it in his pack. "They're not happy with me," he says. Winter does not know yet who "they" are, but he does not ask. The package -- _the boy? Grant?_ \-- sighs deeply. His voice wavers.  
  
"I'm a failure," he says. "They don't say it to my face. But I can hear well. That's the one thing I can do. I can't see, I can't breathe without help. But I can hear them and that's what they say. They wanted something big and strong and all they got was me."  
  
The Soldier flexes his metal hand. He remembers -- _does he?_ \-- the sound of frustrated voices, "nothing but muscle memory" "we can't weaponize an invalid" "he can't even speak, he just screams" --  
  
"At first," Winter begins, "I was also a failure."  
  
Grant has his glasses on again. He tries to focus on Winter's face.  
  
"They were not happy with my -- progress," Winter continues. More information without prompting -- no, he was prompted. He was not told to hide his past. This is not disobeying. "I was too willful. Eventually, though, I became what they wanted. What they needed."  
  
"I think that's dumb. Willful means you want to live."  
  
Something about those words brings a lump to Winter’s throat.  
  
Grant hugs his legs. The hollows of his eyes look bruised. It seems there is a timer over his head that only he is aware of, but Winter can see it too, and he stands with purpose.  
  
"We've got to go," Winter says.  
  
"Go where?" Grant snorts, monotone. "I can't even live outside this place. They've tried before."  
  
"Have they?"  
  
"Yeah," Grant says, casual. "I almost died. Come on -- I need my other pills soon."  
  
The boy stands, then nudges the pack towards Winter, giving up his stubborn pride from earlier. Winter stares at it, like it is some key to why he is saying so _goddamn much_ to this kid, but he picks it up anyway.  
  
"Which way?" Winter says.  
  
Grant squints. "I think -- left."  
  
Winter shakes his head. "Schematics don't say that."  
  
"Oh," Grant says. "Okay, let’s follow you."  
  
"Good idea," Winter says.  
  
They reach cold storage within half an hour in silence. At the door, Winter notices Grant rocking on his feet, woozy from the journey.  
  
"Sit down and wait," Winter says, waving his human hand. The kid does it without being told, and Winter tosses the bag to him carefully. "Grab something to eat."  
  
"Okay," Grant says. He looks at Winter, little face drawn down, like he’s sensed something wrong. "Are you okay?"  
  
"Sure I am.” Winter replies. The locks closest to the room begin to hiss, their parting visible beyond the thick glass. Steam rises, and the Soldier is reminded of something deeply unpleasant, a cold sensation in his gut. The steam means something is wrong with him, he realizes. The steam means he is flawed, and needs to rest.  
  
"You're not okay," Grant says. He's near Winter now, reaching out for him. "You look bad."  
  
"I don't," Winter says, teeth gritting. The next set of locks open, and he can hear the crackling air, and the clouds of steam fog the inner doors. "Siddown, kid, that's an order."  
  
Grant obeys, though he is puzzled rather than chafing under the order, like Winter thought he would.

The room is filled with glass and wood. Boxes, half-opened, litter the left side, nearest the wall that hugs the center of the building. There are no windows, not so far down, but the clear glass cryotubes give the illusion of depth. They are too fine and well-shaped to be Winter’s own, but they are frosted on the edges, and there is that phantom hiss of the tube closing over him.

“What’re we here for, kid? What do you need me to do?” Winter says.

His voice echos oddly around the room and he freezes. It is not his voice that bounces back, clipped and analytical -- this is something animated, drawling. Yet it belongs to him all the same.

“Just stand there,” Grant says. He seems shy. “I know what I need. If you’re taking me, they’ll be able to get this stuff. We just need a few days, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure.”

Grant will be busy for a while, now, so Winter shakes off his uneasiness and looks through the storage room. What he finds unnerves him even more. Most of the tubes are thin, perhaps a third of the size of his own, and there are stringy, fleshy things within them, floating in suspension. Most look like spinal columns that had thought to grow limbs. Along the line there is a half-shaped infant, curled in on itself like it would be in the womb, but its skin is fused together in a solid mass. All of them have a number, the same title preceding it:

> **G _ENETIC_   R _ECOVERY_   _of_  A _DVANCED_   N _EOMORPHIC_   T _ECHNOLOGY_**

There is a break in the numbers, an interval of ten. The next in the sequence is an empty tube, simply marked VIABLE with smudged dry-erase, and beside it, the largest case of all.

The man behind the glass is a corpse. He is half-formed from the waist down, and one side of his body atrophied and uneven, his limbs mis-matched in size and musculature. But his face, his jaw, his closed and heavily lashed eyes -- those are familiar, peaceful, perfect. A name unwinds in Winter's head, his stomach bottoming like he's crested the hill of a roller-coaster and dropped down like a stone. It is the name he dreams of, at times, but in fractures, like his own name, lost further to time.  
  
"Steve," he says, a revelation, metal hand splaying on the glass.  
  
Boxes upset behind him, their contents clattering to the ground. Grant has dropped whatever he was gathering.  
  
"Don't say that name!"  
  
The boy's chest is heaving. His eyes fill with tears; he looks at Winter with such intense loathing that it almost makes the hardened soldier balk.  
  
"Don't ever say that name again," Grant whispers. He wavers. Winter reaches forward as if to catch him, but Grant still manages to keep his balance.

“Why not?”

“It’s his name,” Grant chokes, fumbling for something in his pocket. It is his inhaler, and he takes a grateful spray before continuing. “The man they want me to be. I can’t be him. I don’t want to be him.”

“No one can be him.”

That is not the right thing to say, and Winter knows it. Grant looks like he’s about to toss his inhaler down, but instead he just begins picking up the mess on the floor. Soon Winter has quite a pack to carry, himself, but it is easy. He carries Grant’s, too.

Winter knows they must take an alternate route to the surface; the bodies back where he’d taken the compound, though only a day cold, would pose a biohazard to Grant. The other way to the outside is through a repurposed missile bay, and they head there now. Winter lets Grant go ahead of him letting the boy set his ponderous pace. Every so often they must rest, but Grant seems steady. They make good time.

They do not make much small talk at first; it is mostly Winter directing them both. It’s good for him: he’s even-keel, himself again, his words no longer drawling and strange in his mouth. But eventually the boy starts chattering, past his upset in the storage room.

“I want to see all sorts of things,” Grant says. He seems to have forgotten he is being kidnapped.

Winter decides not to remind him. “It will most likely be snowing. It’ll be hard to see much.”

“I hope we see some animals,” Grant says. “They have to hunt, right?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Do you think we’ll see a bear? A wolf? Maybe a fox?”

“I’m not sure any of those animals live around here,” Winter says. The boy sighs; Winter goes on, unprompted. “But you might see a rabbit.”

“Oh, okay.” That pleases him well enough, and he smiles. “I’ve never seen animals before. Just in books. I’d even take seeing some bugs.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of those, no matter where we go.”

It is night when they reach the blast door, so they make camp under the ladder. Winter feeds them both with some dry rations and Grant takes his battery of pills. They lean against each other, and the boy sleeps. Winter dreams.

**

“C’mon, big guy. We gotta get going.”

“God. I don’t want to. Please.”

“Beggin’ won’t work. I know you don’t want to, fella. But you gotta keep going.”

“Please, B --. Please I can’t keep going.”

“Yes you can. Yes you can. You’re big and strong now, right? You gotta show the men how it’s done, don’t you?”

“I can’t, Jesus. I’ve been up for three days, B --. Just -- one more hour. One more hour.”

“I’m sorry, Steve. I’m sorry. But we have to go.”

**

Morning comes, and the blast door opens with great, hydraulic groaning. Grant looks up into the grey sky above him, eyes wide. Even if there is no sun, this is the first time he has truly seen the world. It is not snowing very hard yet, but there is a slow drift of flakes, and Grant tenses with excitement.

“Come on. You’ve got to call your team, right?”

“Not yet,” Winter says. “We have to make the drop point, first.”

It’s a lie: he should have called them as soon as he’d picked up the boy back in his room, to have them extract them at the blast door. But he doesn’t _want_ to, and he doesn’t know why.

The ladder to the outside is short but icy; Winter lets Grant go ahead so he can catch him if the boy slips.

The boy pauses suddenly above him. “Oh.”

Winter stills. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Grant says. “Just surprised. It’s cold.”

“Is it.”

They have only gone a mile from the compound when Winter notices the smell of sick on Grant. It is sour, and subtle, but his senses pick up on it. Grant trudges through, swathed in coats and swimming in his boots; if he knows he is sick, he does not seem to know.

They reach two miles. The wind picks up the scent again: Grant is worse. Winter calls out for them to rest and the boy does not hear him, still trudging forward.

“Grant,” Winter says. The boy keeps forward, wavering, and then falls, his glasses disappearing in the powder. Winter catches him by the arm before he hits the ground.

“Ow,” Grant says, though he sounds distracted, as if the pain is an afterthought. The boy’s face is flushed and his eyes are red, rimmed with fever.

Winter clears a place beneath a tree, puts down one of the survival blankets, sits Grant on it. Even beneath his glove he feels the boy’s fever. It is high enough that he would need an ice bath, rather than keeping him under the blankets. Winter unzips the three coats the boy wears and when he pulls out the boy’s arms he sees the problem.

Grant has a cut on his hand, barely an inch wide, presumably gotten during their climb up the ladder. It is already fouled, the lines of blood poisoning black beneath Grant’s thin skin. It etches patterns in the scald burn that Winter had seen before, like little rivers of rot among smooth mountains. Even as Winter begins to search his mental resources for a solution, the poison climbs, like dropped ink on wet paper.

There is nothing to be done.

Winter begins the motions of healing anyway, for his own peace of mind. He packs the wound with ice, and keeps a cold press to the boy’s neck. He shivers all the while, feeling nearly unmade with sudden worry.

“I’m failing,” Grant says, so suddenly that Winter startles. “Just like they -- they said. Failing, I’m --”

“No.”

The boy’s breath stutters, though he is too dehydrated for real tears. “They’re right. Were right. I’m nothing --”

“I do not know this -- Steve you are compared to,” Winter interrupts, tasting the lie but swallowing it anyway, “but I do know you are fine on your own, Grant. They were wrong to try to make you something you are not.”

“Oh.”

“It’s true,” Winter says. “You are excellent the way you are. You have survived. And you got to see the sky.”

“Yeah.”

Something disturbs the underbrush. A flash of red-orange -- Winter pulls a knife in response. It is only a she-fox, a small rodent dangling in her sharp teeth. Most likely she is returning to her den, to feed her kits. She stares at Winter, and does not move; she has heard the sudden cry in his heart: _please stay._

“Grant,” Winter whispers, propping the boy up carefully. “Look, can you see it? It’s a fox.”

The boy squints. He does not have his glasses, but he seems to focus. His voice is soft, an afterthought of waning strength. “It’s pretty.”

The fox dances away, a nimble and beautiful arc of flame. Grant settles in Winter’s arms like a child does with his father, and closes his eyes.

Winter comprehends what happens next, but he does not acknowledge it at first. He does not want to. He pillows Grant against his human arm, hooks the boy’s hair behind his ears. He pulls the boy out of his nest of coats, smooths down the front of his pyjamas, and arranges the boy’s hands over his stomach, making sure the injured one hides beneath the other.

The snow dusts white freckles against Grant’s fading flush. They dance prettily on his nose, his mouth, but only the winds stirs them before they melt.

Winter knows death, intimately. It is his weapon to wield; he knows how to call it from fire, from gunshot, from the grip of either hand. He knows life left him behind, once, but there will be no miraculous return for this boy.

The small body weighs so little in Winter’s arms, yet it burdens him. Winter bows over Grant and gives in to sudden, stomach-clenching sobs, foreign and painful. He does not cover his eyes while he weeps and the tears fall and freeze against the boy’s folded hands.

“I’m sorry, little guy,” Winter says, in a voice that should have died long ago, but still echos in his mind, addressing another man long departed. Grant is no dream-phantom; he is real. He is flesh and bone, and he is gone.

**

Night deepens the grey of the sky. Winter approaches the helicopter, three handlers arrayed before it. He passes them his weapons obediently until he is only his respirator and his knives and his uniform.

“Where is it?” The scientist pokes his head out of the chopper, his remaining hair whipping around his thick face.

“Storage,” Winter says.

“Damn.” The scientist sighs, waving at the guards to follow the Soldier in. “We needed him viable. Guess we got here too late.”

“Yes,” Winter says. He turns, watching the black smoke compliment the dark clouds above, the compound folding in on itself in the blaze.

It is not the boy’s pyre. Grant lies beneath boughs of fragrant pine, his headstone a smooth river-rock, his funeral bouquet sprigs of holly, thick with berries. The earth will take him when the world thaws, and no human will pick him apart for his body’s secrets. He will meet the animals he was never allowed to see or touch. His bones will bleach white and beautiful in the sun, vines and flowers will curl around his ribcage, colorful as his tiny, perfect soul.

Grant is free.

**

“It’s a cold day.”

“You want to stay in?”

“Sure do. Ain't nothing out there but the ice. Probably get a cold or somethin.”

“That’d do you in for sure, right, Steve?”

“I’m tougher’n I look now, Buck. C’mon. Stay with me. I’ll show you just how strong I’ve become.”

“Is that a promise, little guy?”

“It sure is, pal. Sure is.”

**

They find the Soldier two months after he disappears. He is hard to subdue, but in the end he gives in, and comes willingly. The ember stirred within him tells him to be patient, to wait: _someday._

He is damaged beyond immediate repair. He must be placed in freeze until it is decided what is to be done with him. He is cleaned, and put in the vest that helps the cryochamber monitor his vitals. His street clothes are gathered to be burned. As they are taken up he sees something in the pocket of his cargo pants, and the scientist holding them nearly pisses himself in fear as the Soldier lurches towards him to seize it.

He has saved a small scrap of cotton fabric, blue-and-white striped. He runs it between his fingers, metal and flesh alike, then tucks it beneath his vest. He thinks of wild growth, green and yellow and blue and red, all woven through a cage of gleaming ivory. He thinks of a child's smile, a face he can no longer place. He thinks of the man whose name he has forgotten once again, but whose warmth still lingers, even as the coffin closes and the steam fogs the glass, and the ice takes him.

The Soldier sleeps. He dreams of a boy, who holds his small and fragile hands out towards him, smiling wide and familiar. _Someday_ , he says, _someone will come for you, like you came for me._

_Someday you will be free._


End file.
